1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to communication systems, and more particularly, to providing a secure structure for communication of sensitive information, such as a key, in a Long Term Evolution (LTE) based wireless wide area network (WWAN).
2. Background
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various telecommunication services such as telephony, video, data, messaging, and broadcasts. Typical wireless communication systems may employ multiple-access technologies capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing available system resources (e.g., bandwidth, transmit power). Examples of such multiple-access technologies include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, single-carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) systems, and time division synchronous code division multiple access (TD-SCDMA) systems.
These multiple access technologies have been adopted in various telecommunication standards to provide a common protocol that enables different wireless devices to communicate on a municipal, national, regional, and even global level. An example of a telecommunication standard is Long Term Evolution (LTE). LTE is a set of enhancements to the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) mobile standard promulgated by Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). LTE is designed to better support mobile broadband Internet access by improving spectral efficiency, lower costs, improve services, make use of new spectrum, and better integrate with other open standards using OFDMA on the downlink (DL), SC-FDMA on the uplink (UL), and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna technology. LTE may support direct device-to-device (D2D) (peer-to-peer) communication.
Many devices may be operable in a cellular network. When a first device detects another device, the first device may attempt to communicate directly with the device of interest. Serving mobility management entities (MMES) may be used to establish a D2D communication link between the devices. No functionality exists within the WWAN that allows the two devices that are attached to an LTE network to perform secure D2D communications where there is no key in common Additionally, current LTE NAS security procedures allow the use of integrity protection with a 32 bit MAC and with optional ciphering (e.g., ciphering may be optionally set to on or off for all messages) after the establishment of a security context. Even when the ciphering option is selected, the initial message (i.e. the first message sent by the UE when coming out of idle) is sent with only integrity. While the LTE NAS security procedures may provide suitable protection for messages and data related to the network access, the procedures may not be strong enough to protect other types of data (e.g., a key or secret material used to generate a key for secure D2D communications).
As the demand for D2D communication increases, there exists a need for methods/apparatuses for providing additional security for communication of sensitive information within LTE while minimizing use of WWAN resources.